Killed at the Whim of a Hat by Colin Cotterill

The launch of a brand new series by the internationally bestselling, critically acclaimed author of The Coroner’s Lunch With worldwide critical acclaim, Colin Cotterill is one of the most highly regarded “cult favorite” crime writers today. Now, with this new series, Cotterill is poised to break into the mainstream. Set in present day rural Thailand, Cotterill is as sharp and witty, yet more engaging and charming, than ever before.

Jimm Juree was a crime reporter for the Chiang Mai Daily Mail with a somewhat eccentric family—a mother who might be drifting mentally; a grandfather—a retired cop—who rarely talks; a younger brother obsessed with body-building, and a transgendered, former beauty pageant queen, former older brother. When Jimm is forced to follow her family to a rural village on the coast of Southern Thailand, she’s convinced her career—maybe her life—is over. So when a van containing the skeletal remains of two hippies, one of them wearing a hat, is inexplicably unearthed in a local farmer’s field, Jimm is thrilled. Shortly thereafter an abbot at a local Buddhist temple is viciously murdered, with the temple’s monk and nun the only suspects.

Suddenly Jimm’s new life becomes somewhat more promising—and a lot more deadly. And if Jimm is to make the most of this opportunity, and unravel the mysteries that underlie these inexplicable events, it will take luck, perseverance, and the help of her entire family. One of Library Journal's Best Mystery Books of 2011

Born in London, COLIN COTTERILL has worked as teacher in Israel, Australia, the U.S. and Japan before he started training teachers in Thailand. Cotterill and his wife live in a small fishing village on the Gulf of Siam in Southern Thailand. He has won the Dilys and a CWA Dagger and has been a finalist for several other awards.

Unrated Critic Reviews for Killed at the Whim of a Hat

Kirkus Reviews

It's just the kind of crime that Jimm Juree would have covered in her previous life as a reporter in the bustling city of Chiang Mai, but the decision by her eccentric mother Mair to give up the family business—"a sort of rustic 7-Eleven" near Chiang Mai University—has thrown the whole family int...

The New York Times

I assumed it was the pen in his shirt front pocket that gave him his stoop.” About an unexpectedly beautiful nun: “You’d have to be one serious monk to turn your back on a babe like that.”
And from the daughter of a dangerously powerful politician and mogul, a shade less merrily, “There ...

Publishers Weekly

At the start of Cotterill's excellent first in a new series, 34-year-old Jimm Juree, who's poised to become only the second female senior crime reporter in all of Thailand, has her professional ambitions dashed when her eccentric mother abruptly sells the family home and business in Chiang Mai in...

Mysterious Reviews

Review: Set in present day Thailand, Colin Cotterill introduces a new (series?) character in Jimm Juree, a former crime reporter who has moved from the city with her Mother and siblings to help run the Gulf Bay Lovely Resort and Restaurant along the country's remote southern coast, in Killed at t...

Shots

Taking into account established traditions (if Buddhist monks are not allowed to wear a hat why does one cover the head of the dead abbot?) and with the aid of her family, who are sometimes more aware than she realises, who have both skills of which she is aware and skills that she has never real...